


you'll find me in the drift

by emmaofmisthaven



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Referenced Overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaofmisthaven/pseuds/emmaofmisthaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She dreams of Aurora Blake, but it is not her dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll find me in the drift

She dreams of Aurora Blake, even if she doesn’t mean to.

Drift compatibility is funny that way, in that the more you repress your memories, the biggest the chances of chasing the rabbit. The Blakes are not compatible for that reason – perfect partners on paper but incapable of working in tandem in practice. Too many memories, the feelings bitter, the words left unsaid. So Bellamy doesn’t repress his memories with her, the same way Clarke doesn’t dwell on her father’s death. It is easier that way, even if painful. The memories – images, sounds, smells – glide over them in the drift, and Clarke always make sure not to focus on them too much, not on hers, not on his. Bellamy does the same, their relationship built on respect and secrecy, something she is grateful for.

She dreams of Aurora Blake, but it is not her dream.

It is not a dream at all, the memories too vivid and too painful to come out of nowhere – the smell of cigarettes and alcohol, heavy curtains over the windows and piles of dishes in the sink. Music is playing in the background, the soft notes of an old song barely audible above the laboured breaths of Aurora. Her eyes are heavy, exhaustion and bad lightening drawing dark circles under her eyes as her hair falls in dirty knots around her face. She is shaking as she bites down on her bottom lip, eyes wide and bloodshot. But it is her arm Clarke’s eyes are drawn too – the purple bruise in the crook of her elbow, a pearl of blood sliding down to her wrist. The syringe lies on the flood, next to the spoon and lighter, and Clarke’s stomach churns at the sight of it.

She wakes up in a startle – doesn’t need to see how the dream ends. She knows how it ends, has always known. So she forces herself to even her breathing, taking long inspiration through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, until her heart beats at a decent pace again. Only then does her brain come up with the right conclusion, only then does it come up with _ghost-drifting_.

Clarke isn’t unfamiliar with its effects – she found herself reading the Iliad not a month ago, and Bellamy now likes soccer where he hated all sports – but it is the first time they’ve shared a dream (nightmare) and it leaves her confused and lost for words.

It leaves her worried to death, and she stands up on shaky legs, world spinning around her, before she grabs her sweater and gets out of her room. The Shatterdome is eerily silent in the middle of the night, only the buzz of neon lights to accompany the soft paddle of her footsteps as she moves down the hallways. It’s not hard to guess where a distraught Bellamy would go in the middle of the night, half because she’s still (kind of) in his head and half because it’s where she would go too.

The door to the hangar is open when she rounds the corner, and so she slips outside of the living quarters, cursing under her breath as the cold wind brushes against her face and bare legs. At least she wears her slippers, but she still hugs her chest as she walks across the hangar.

Alpha Princess stands proudly against a wall, blue and copper and all kinds of menacing in the dead of the night. When Clarke turns her head, it’s to the war clock beneath the large windows of the LOCCENT Mission Control – it reads twelve days, five hours, and then some. If they’re lucky, they’ll have about another week before the next Kaiju attack. They’re not always lucky, these days.

Bellamy sits on the ground, despite the coldness of the concrete, his back against Alpha Princess’s oversized foot. Clarke shivers when she sits next to him, because her night shorts are, well, short and so her skin touches the ground and it’s not the best feeling in the world. Still, she leans her head against the Jaeger’s foot, and listens to the sound of metal against metal above their heads as Raven works on this or that part of the robot. It’s the middle of the night, but Raven pretty much never sleeps anyway, so Clarke isn’t surprised.

Bellamy takes her hand in his, the warmth of his palm a sharp contrast with the night chill. He doesn’t do much after that, just holds her hand without even lacing their fingers, like he’s in kindergarten and she’s his first puppy love. It’s endearing, if not plain adorable. Still, they’re still ghost-drifting, and Clarke knows how important physical contact is in those moments. She doesn’t understand why they’re still not allowed to share a dorm, why it’s only for spouses and siblings – they need the intimacy of it even if they’re not a couple. They need the touch of skin against skin, need to know the other is close, there, safe.

So she wraps both her arms around his bicep, and presses her cheek to his shoulder. He’s warm all over, but the kind of warm that comes with waking up in a startle, sweaty and lost and confused. That’s how she woke up too, only worse with him because he relived the memory where she saw it for the first time. She doesn’t want to know how that feels, even if she does know because of their neural connection.

(He knows how it feels about her father, too, blood coming out of his eyes and nose and ears after he tried the first handshake with a Jaeger, alone.)

Bellamy tilts his head to the side so it rests on top of hers, and they remain that way for a while, breathing in and out in synch until his heart goes back to a decent rate and his mind calms down. It’s weird, this co-dependency they’ve built even since he barged head first into her life, especially since she had sworn off that kind of relationship after Wells’ funeral. But Bellamy is a stubborn asshole, and he relies on her as much as she relies on him, so Clarke learns to get used to it.

“Are you okay?” she asks him after what feels like forever.

She already knows the answer to that question (a big, fat no) but she asks anyway because silence is stretching between them and it’s getting awkward. Or maybe she’s the one who’s making it awkward. Probably the latter.

“Yeah,” he replies without an ounce of sincerity. But they both know he’s lying, so it’s okay. “Let’s go back to bed.”

He stands up and then helps her do the same, and he doesn’t let go of her hand even as they leave the hangar, even as they walk down the hallways in silence. Clarke hesitates once they’re back to their quarters, her eyes darting from her door to his, on the opposite wall, then to hers again. But Bellamy doesn’t let her ask the question even as it’s on the tip on her tongue, and instead drags her inside his own room.

She doesn’t mind all that much, at least she wouldn’t, but the bunk bed were clearly not made for two (they were barely made for one) so finding a good sleeping position is difficult. It involves a lot of elbowing and kneeling the other in sensitive parts and groaning until Bellamy sighs dramatically and settles for being the big spoon. Which, okay, makes sense.

His hold is tight around her waist, his arm solid beneath her head, and the warmth of him cocoons her comfortably. She closes her eyes and breathes in, deeply, before she falls asleep in a matter of seconds.

(When she wakes up, he’s kissing his way up her shoulder and neck, nosing at her jaw a little. It says a lot about her and about them that Clarke is not bothered in the slightest. She tilts her head a little to give him better access to her neck, and buries her hand in his mop of hair so she can guide him to her pulse point.)

(Kaiju attack be damn, she’s staying in bed today.)


End file.
